R v Martin McCauley

Judgment delivered by the Lord Chief Justice on 10 September 2014 in the matter of an appeal by our client Martin McCauley who was shot and seriously wounded by members of the RUC’s Special Branch HMSU in November near Lurgan, Co Armagh on 24 November 1982. The incident was one of the notorious series of shootings of unarmed civilians in North Armagh in late 1982. Mr McCauley’s friend Michael Tighe was fatally wounded. Mr McCauley was subsequently convicted of possessing firearms in suspicious circumstances. Senior RUC members had deliberately witheld from the prosecution, defence and the judge the existence of a listening device, which was subsequently destroyed by an Assistant Chief Constable. In 2013 the Criminal Cases Review Commission referred the conviction to the Court of Appeal. In May 2014 the PPS decided it would no longer stand over the safety of the conviction and the conviction was ultimately quashed.

R v Martin McCauley